


Nine (And Other Such Numbers)

by Cuttingrmflr



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-04
Updated: 2015-03-04
Packaged: 2018-03-16 06:09:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3477380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuttingrmflr/pseuds/Cuttingrmflr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's been pretending he's a man that didn't ever love Sherlock. It’s been two years now and he's not doing very well at that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nine (And Other Such Numbers)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scullyseviltwin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scullyseviltwin/gifts).



For three months after the fall he didn't sleep, not really. On day one hundred and twenty eight John slept for seventeen hours.

Since then he wakes up every morning at four fifteen exactly with a dull sort of nausea in his stomach and an ache in his joints. He hits the snooze - just once - and nine minutes later he’s up. It's a time when nothing really exists, past the point for it to be considered night and too early to really be the start of day. It's that sort of in-between uncomfortable white noise of the world and it seeps into John, the static of it all making him feel outside himself. And he needs that.

His stride is shaky and filled with that constant hum and John can't remember when he could just be still and grounded, but he can remember the tremor in Sherlock’s voice and he feels it now in the concrete, passing through the soles of his feet and deep into his marrow. He gravitates toward that feeling and lets it take over, the energy of it all leaving little else.

And so he tries to believe he’s a man that couldn’t have ever loved Sherlock.

It's been half a year and he doesn't recognize himself anymore. He's building a John without a Sherlock and he buzzes through each day on the feel of four fifteen and routine.

A routine that includes stepping out onto Baker St. and running through a blank city for an hour, sometimes more, he doesn’t really know. It’s not until the likes of Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade keep reminding him he has to “take care of himself” that he allows running to become his ‘thing’. Speaking with even the smallest level of enthusiasm about it does work well to placate everyone after all, and so he just goes with it. He makes small talk about his latest 10k time like it’s something he cares about, and somehow ends up at a running club meetup with Lestrade. The Inspector had been trying every angle to get him out for anything other than work, so when he brings it up for the third time, John just smiles and agrees. It’s quite clear by the end of the warm up 5k that Lestrade has never run except out of pure necessity, even as he swears he's fine bent over in a bush. John had already figured as much, so he insists they ditch the group to grab a couple of pints instead.

It’s the day before his birthday and Molly is going on and on about those five-toed shoes, how he just *must* try them for running and ‘what size are you again?’, so he just listens and nods and answers and tries to act surprised when she gives them to him the next evening during his birthday drinks. He spends the evening laughing too hard at jokes and telling his share of bad ones. It’s been a year and he’s still trying too hard because everyone else is doing the same.

The shoes are utterly ridiculous and take forever to put on and he hates them. He also loves them. The vibration of almost nothing under his feet hits through muscle and bone and makes him almost feel like he’s still part of something. But soon it becomes the steady beat of something solid hitting something hollow again, and he remembers that it was never about being a part of something. He was part of someone, but that was before, that was old John. The shoes make him feel like he could just turn west and keep going, far past the edge of London and into the woods and get lost there. Or maybe be mauled by a bear, it wouldn't be the worst way to go.

But instead he turns towards the hospital and sprints past it faster than he usually does, leaving a heavy curve of negative space in his wake. John’s sure at some point the concrete in front will split open and swallow him whole from the pressure, but he rounds the bend of West Smithfield for the six hundredth time and still nothing happens.

He's been pretending he's a man that didn't ever love Sherlock. It’s been two years now and he's not doing very well at that.

He has, however, done very well at distancing himself from everyone, and growing a mustache for that matter. It's a hideous thing really and he knows it, but to be honest it's one of his almost-comforts. He’s becoming a different version of John because this is just a different version of his life. Just like the running and those ridiculous fucking shoes and his flat far away from Baker Street. And Mary. His dear Mary.

He’s John, but not really John, and that’s just fine. Mary is bringing that version to life for real and he lets it happen, because this John loves Mary.

He doesn’t know why the default snooze setting on an alarm is exactly nine minutes, but it is. Those nine minutes are the longest part of John’s day, and no matter what he does he can’t break that part of the routine. A deep breath before he slides out of bed, puts his feet on the ground and is locked into that hum of four fifteen and concrete, becomes the John that never loved Sherlock, and is okay.

Until tomorrow and the next, and all the ones after, when in that stillness he feels it; warm and sweet and sharp, and in those five hundred and forty seconds he lets himself be the man that loved Sherlock, and he’s not at all okay.

  



End file.
